According to a recent research conducted, watching television too much can lead to a feeling of brain-dead, not only that, there is also the possibility that, it reduces your lifespan by some years.
Researchers have found that the more time one spends before the TV, his risk of dying at an earlier age increases, particularly from heart diseases.
The survey consisted of 8,800 adults who had no past-history of heart disease for more than six years. In comparison with people who spent less than two hours before the T.V on a daily basis, people who watched four hours or even more per day were 80 percent more prone to die from heart disease and 46 percent more predisposed to die from any cause. All said, 284 of the people being surveyed actually died during the study.
The study, which has been published on the website of Circulation, an American Heart Association Journal, illustrated that every extra hour spent watching TV increases the risk of dying earlier from heart disease by 18 percent and the overall probability of death by 11 percent.
This pattern sustained even when the researchers took into consideration the level of education reached and the health of the participants in general, for example, their age, whether they were smokers or not, their level of cholesterol as well as their blood pressure.
Television is not deadly in itself. The genuine problem seems to be the fact of sitting before it for hours in the “default position” to watch TV, affirms the principal author of the study, David Dunstan, PhD, the person in charge of the physical activity lab at Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, a national research centre found in Victoria, Australia.
Dunstan explains that watching television for a prolonged time is equivalent to a lot of sitting. The latter invariably means that there is a lack of muscle movement. He further elaborates that when someone’s muscle stay inactive for too much time, it can lead to the disruption of one’s metabolism.
What’s more, doing exercises will not compromise for the long hours that you have spent watching television. Dunstan and his team members included in their analysis the amount of exercise that the participants carried out. When they made a comparison between the groups of adult who did exercises for identical number of hours but watched TV for varied number of hours, it was found that the people who watched more television were still more prone to die during the study.
Dunstan clarifies that one can have an active lifestyle while still spending lots of time before the television set. However, it should be noted that television is not necessarily taking place of our exercise time; it is on the contrary replacing our daily, “non-sweaty” movements as simple as standing and walking from room to room. Dunstan is of view of that, the positive health effects of these seemingly basic and negligible activities are undervalued.
Prior studies have demonstrated a link between sitting time and the probability of heart disease and death. However, this research is the first one to be focusing on television watching, which is one of the most favorite and common leisure activities of people. The study showed that the adults in Australia, where it was conducted, watch TV on average around three hours per day; in the United State, the number of hours spent in watching television was estimated to be up to five hours daily.
Dunstan states that the total time spent watching television is a good indicator of the overall sitting time. On the other hand, Peter Katzmarzyk, PhD, exercise scientist at the Pennington Biomedical Research Centre, found in Baton Rouge, La, claims that there is also certain evidence that watching television may be unhealthier than other inactive activities.
Peter Katzmarzyk, who was not part of the study, but has nonetheless studied the health effects of the amount of sitting time, declares that, reading or doing homework is not necessarily linked with risk factors as much as television viewing. He further says that researchers are not sure that it is the sedentary behavior itself that is responsible for the increased probability of health-related risks or the other things that we engage into while watching TV, like eating snacks.
Dunstan and his colleagues noted that as the study kept control on the diet quality and calorie intake, snacking while watching TV is implausible to explain the increased death risks identified in the study. Nevertheless, Dunstan does agree that combining inactivity with the consumption of junk food that is associated with watching television surely has negative effects on the health.
He advance that studies have shown that television viewing leads to a rise in the consumption of foods that is energy-dense. It is an incentive for poor nutritional behavior, whereas some other types of inactive behavior, such as reading, are less likely to promote poor dietary behavior. Moreover, as so few calories are burnt, roughly the same number as sleeping, hour for hour – watching TV has a tendency to reduce a person’s general energy output.
Furthermore, Dunstan points out that though it is an easy and practical means to gauge a person’s sitting time, television viewing is not the sole reason for the decline of everyday movements. It is a known fact that technology has made people more sedentary on the whole. While there are still various occupations that allow us to be on our feet all day, an increasing number of us sit at our desks glued to our computer screen. For example, instead of walking around to talk to our co-workers we prefer to e-mail them.
Dunstan declares that modern technology largely responsible for a lot of incidental, non-sweaty activities of our lives.
Katzmarzyk suggests that workers who are deskbound should stand up and move around whenever they get the opportunity. Workers can try to be more active at work by standing up while talking on the telephone or take meetings while walking- anything to become active during the day.
According to Dunstan, even watching television gives us the opportunity to move around. For instance, commercial breaks are integrated excuses to stand up and do some stitching for a minute or two.
Doing exercise is fundamental, however avoiding extended periods of sitting is nearly as essential. Dunstan advises to try and be active as much as possible, for the more one moves the more health benefits he is going to enjoy.
Anti Aging, Gerontology, Health And Aging, Lifestyle, Longevity
Mon, Feb 1, 2010
Anti Aging, Gerontology, Health And Aging, Lifestyle, Longevity